Sword of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter

October 21st, 2011, 03:43

This game just showed up for pre-order on Steam and Impulse here in the USA. Interestingly, it seems to actually require DirectX 10. You must have at least Windows Vista and a DX10 capable video card to play.

There's some included DLC if you pre-purchase. The DLC is purely cosmetic giving you extra voice options, icons, and badges to tack onto your ships for two of the races in the game (Hivers and Tarka for Steam, Liir and Morrigi for Impulse).

If you're looking for reading material, PC Gamer has a bunch. There should be more post-release, assuming you can bear the thought of having not-quite-so-many icon choices for your favorite race.

Also, if anyone wants to check out SotS 1, there's a Complete Edition (all three expansion packs included) on sale at Steam right now for 5 euros (I guess it's 5 USD in the US and 5 zorkmids in Dredmor). It's cheaper than a pint of good beer and lasts whole lot longer (unless you really nurse your drinks!).

Originally Posted by Zloth
There's some included DLC if you pre-purchase. The DLC is purely cosmetic giving you extra voice options, icons, and badges to tack onto your ships for two of the races in the game (Hivers and Tarka for Steam, Liir and Morrigi for Impulse).

Retail DLC has sol extra. Digital version comes with liir and som other.

-- I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou
"Those who dont read history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke

Yesterday they released the wrong version on Steam, giving everyone some beta version of the game. They finally got the release version published about 12 hours late and… it was just as bad. I don't think you can even complete a game and I know you wouldn't want to try. Features are greyed out, textures are missing, critical in-game help is missing, even the option to start in full screen mode doesn't work right.

(And I have learned once again - NEVER EVER PRE-ORDER unless you are part of beta testing.)

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Does anyone really believe that "beta by mistake" excuse?

It must be one of the least likely excuses in the history of bad ones.

It actually makes some sense here. When SotS2 was beta testing, they used Steam to distribute the beta test version.

Whether the developers accidentally sent the wrong one or Steam just activated the wrong one didn't end up mattering much. That was just a 12 hour delay. What's quite a bit more annoying to me is that the devs just sold us an "IOU" and a basket full of apologies.

If you treat the game as more of a preview than a game then it is quite impressive. They are adding a lot of very cool things. I just hope the companies can survive long enough to get those cool things working!

This all leaves me in a little delima…. By all rights, the devs and the publisher deserve to burn in the fires of capitalism for trying to do more than they could then covering up the fact when it became obvious that they weren't going to get this thing done before they ran out of cash. They've given us a way to get a refund so I could get my money back. If lots of people do that, one or both companies will likely go bankrupt.

On the other hand, they are one of the very, very few making/publishing 4X games these days. If the companies get broken up, those people are probably going to get stuck making games for the huge casual market, not more 4X games. Plus there's a good chance we'll be getting free goodies for sticking with them even though they took our money before they had a product to hand to us.

Hmmm, which way to go? I hope some RPG makers are watching this. I bet they could adapt the situation into a pretty good quest.

This disaster was NOT Steams screw up, and as far as we know, the version on Steam now is the final, release version. Apparently, Kerberos lost a large number of developers and is in a bad financial condition and was forced to release the game early. Here is the source on that info

A Paradox representative has posted twice on the Steam forums apologizing for the state of the game, but offering no explanations as to what went wrong and claiming that they intend to fix the game over the coming weeks.

-- "If I've ever offended you, just know that from the bottom of my heart, I really don't give a shit."

But beyond all the technical issues, is the general consensus that there seems to be a decent game with potential going on?

I bought both Game of Thrones: Genesis and Stronghold 3 recently and I can honestly say they even ignoring the technical issues, obvious beta status of the releases and 90s era visuals, the games themselves just aren't very good.

Originally Posted by Motoki
But beyond all the technical issues, is the general consensus that there seems to be a decent game with potential going on?

Patched up(?) its a good game. Could use some tweaking. AI battles take several turns I think and its time consuming. Also there seems to be a general lack of information ingame.

Heavy duty PC will help. Some complain that the game is sluggish but then say they run it on some old PC that doesnt have any muscle power.

Its a complex game but such games are harder to make bug-free than your average corridor shooter with triple A budget. Give it a chance. Its not like there are alternatives for 4x space strategy games.

The initial wrong version was uploaded to steam by mistake because the crew worked 50 hours in one sitting before it:

The initial release was uploaded to steam by mistake, the finished product is actually very decent.

This game improves on everything in the first instalment. After a mistake which lead to the alpha version of the game being uploaded to steam, many customers were given the impression that this game is poorly made and severely broken. The finished product however lives up to my expectations and is a solid, fun game.

-- I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou
"Those who dont read history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke

I'm not as forgiving when simple mistakes like this could of been avoided very easily. Makes you worry about the company's organization. As I said before this isn't the first time this has happened on steam.

I'll wait for a few more patches before I can recommend the game.

-- "If I've ever offended you, just know that from the bottom of my heart, I really don't give a shit."

DArtagnan

If they released 10 triple A 4x space strategies per year I wouldnt forgive either. Now Im glad they release one even if its not in perfect condition during release.

If you really want this kind of game then you have to be glad for what you get. Its a poor man's genre. Its fans are fed like once per year.

-- I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou
"Those who dont read history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke

I'm not the sort of person to be glad for broken software. That said, I wasn't really too interested in this.

To me, it's not about getting a 4X game at all costs. I just want a true successor to MOO2 - and so far, no luck.

Sword of the Stars 2, assuming it will ever work, seems to be more of a wargame than a grand strategy game to me. Too much streamlining for the strategic planet development aspect, and too much focus on the tactical battles and the ship outfitting.

DArtagnan

They released a patch today with a truckload of fixes. They've still got a long way to go and heaven only knows how many new bugs got put in by working so fast but they certainly didn't lie when they said they were going to work really hard to finish the game.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Sword of the Stars 2, assuming it will ever work, seems to be more of a wargame than a grand strategy game to me. Too much streamlining for the strategic planet development aspect, and too much focus on the tactical battles and the ship outfitting.

I actually like that the series focus is more on ship outfitting and tactical battles than planetary management. The first sots was my favorite 4x game by far. Even more than Moo2.

-- I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou
"Those who dont read history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke